I live in a small town in southern Oregon. On Saturday, I was at the Middle School, manning the snack booth for the regional band competition. I did pretty well – over 50 sales! But what fascinated me was that three people asked, somewhat plaintively, if I took debit cards… They were all young moms. They could see that I didn’t have a card acceptance set-up, but they clearly had no other means of paying.
This, of course, is one of the mobile payment scenarios that everyone is thinking about. Clearly, each of the women had a cell phone with her. What will it take to get one (or more) solutions to the “consumer tipping point”, so that it becomes the obvious solution to this problem?
At Glenbrook, we talk about “brand as verb” – what (in this future world) will I say to those moms? “Pay me by phone”? “Send it to me by PayPal?” Other?
As a founding partner of Glenbrook, Carol has offered clients over 25 years of experience in product, marketing, and strategy development with leading financial services providers in both wholesale and retail financial services. She is a co-author of the book “Payments Systems in the U.S.” Before founding Glenbrook Partners, Carol was a managing director of the Global Institutional Services division of Deutsche Bank, in charge of marketing, client online services, and Internet development.
Carol began her career as a corporate lending officer for large multinationals at both Bank of America and Citibank. During her time at Visa International, Carol founded and managed Visa’s European product-development office, where she led a series of electronic-commerce and chip-card projects designed to bring European banks online. Carol formally retired from Glenbrook in June 2020, but remains important to the firm as both a friend and advisor.